February Sucks - Linda's Choice Ch. 04

Sorry this one took this long, but I'm fighting covid19, and it just won't let me be free of it. Between the nauseousness, high temperature, body aches, and headaches, I managed to finish this. If there are mistakes, hang with me.

*****

This was supposed to be a three-part series. Until a couple of fans got a hold of me and made their pitch, I had not planned on doing a 4th Part. I won't name them and associate them with this story. But they do exist and had a compelling argument. That I finish the story my way and not let some pretenders to my universe try and do it for me.

In the end, I came up with another reason. I am writing it for those who followed it, commented on it, and scored it well. For those few, those precious few, I am willing to go once more into the breach and write Part 04: The final chapter.

No. I mean it, dammit. This part is definitely the last one.

No... I am not kidding.

Final means final.

***

This story is the property of the writer Kalimaxos and written by permission of George Anderson.

It is my version of his famous runaway story. February sucks

While you don't have to read his to follow my version, I HIGHLY recommend it. Especially the lead-in.

This part is once again told from Linda's point of view.

I push boundaries and question everything and everyone in my stories. All my characters are flawed and have to deal with their own failings. Some rise above their shortcomings, while others do not. Their choices define them.

In my stories, nothing happens for "no good reason." To me, the real meat of the story is the before and the why.

Like real life, it's often a shitshow.

***

So get tucked in. And get ready for:

"Linda's Choice 04: The Final chapter."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Previously on Part 03

I was doing bills on the shared laptop Jim and I used in the study when I noticed it. The browser had been left on. It was on the page of our local newspaper and a story about Mark LaValliere. The story was about all the speculation by some back then about Mark's indiscretions. And how the local press had ignored it since Mark was the driving force behind our team's success.

There were pictures of a younger Mark and Bella with their children. They looked like they did the day I met them. Then there was mention of the four women in pictures the Post had found with Mark that were not Bella. Two of the women were identified. Both had been targeted by Mark and been divorced by their husbands shortly after. Another was a redhead whose face was pixilated as she and her husband had somehow reconciled. The last picture chilled me to the bone.

It was the picture that had been snapped of me the day I last met Mark with our kids at the mall. The day I explained to him how we were finished. In the picture, Mark was facing the camera. But my face was hidden behind my then wavy blond hair. The distinctive brown and white sweater I wore that day was clearly distinguishable. If Jim had seen this picture, he knew it was me.

"I have known for some time," I heard Jim say behind me.

I froze, realizing that everything I had done to cover up my indiscretion had been for naught. There was no longer any point in pretending otherwise. Jim knew. After taking a deep breath, I finally mustered the courage to look up at him.

"What are you going to do?" I asked.

He stared back at me coldly.

"I haven't figured that out," he said, walking away.

***

After all these years

I thought my life was over.

In that split second of stark consciousness, I saw everything that had happened in my life since my son Tommy's birth flash by. I saw my husband, Jim distancing himself from me. Our diminished sex life. My stalker's death. Jim's refusal to go to marriage counseling. My realization that our marriage would continue for the kid's sake, but not much else. Divorce was out of the question. Keeping the family together for our children was one thing Jim and I had in common.

Yet there was more. My coming to terms that I was too young to live the rest of my life sexually dissatisfied. The affair with Mark. That exciting month of pure sexual abandon. Mark, as he was hurting me our last time together. My walking away from the affair. The decision to force the issue of counseling with Jim. Something that might of worked or not.

Then finding the emails my stalker had sent to my husband out of spite. Don Snider, lying to Jim about him and I having an affair. Making my husband question everything about us. That Jim had not come to me so we can set things straight. The lack of trust. All that was regained when the police provided us with a tape of Snider confessing that he had never had sex with me. The event that led Jim and me on the road to recovery.

I remembered how Mark's gorgeous entrepreneur wife Bella sought me out. Then how she informed me, she knew and had proof of my affair with her husband. How Bella gave me the choice of taking her husband away or saying no and working for her. A job that gave me modeling exposure, managing part of her business, and plenty of money. To pick between my marriage and family over the excitement of being Mark's woman. All I had to do was choose when Mark came for me.

Which he did. That night at Morrison's, the club that our five couple group went dancing at. My ex-lover, Mark showing up to split me up with Jim. And how my best friend, Dee destroyed what was left of her marriage to save mine. How she lured Mark away as the consolation prize. That, after I refused to go with him and threatened to expose him.

How after making that choice, I had to pay the piper and work for Bella. A job that was both professionally, financially, and personally rewarding. Yet Bella's dire threat hung over me. One day, she would compel me to cede my husband to her. And in that moment, I would be forced to choose again. Surrender him, or face exposure and ruin.

Then the night at the party in San Francisco, Bella finally took her "pound of flesh." She did so by claiming my husband as her lover. And doing so as her guards made sure Mark and I watched behind a two-way mirror in utter defeat and humiliation. All while keeping the threat of revealing my secret of her husband and me from my Jim. In a final act of submission, I joined Bella and Jim as her lover for the first of many occasions.

That had been my marriage until that day where my life flashed by. The day I stared at the barrel of the gun as it was about to fire. And I ran out of choices.

***

Numb

For a long time, I was consistently on edge. I was living in fear that my husband would find my secrets. Surprisingly, it was not right after my affair. Back then, I thought that I had covered my tracks well. And to be honest, the distance between myself and Jim made it easier for me. In my view, he had given up on us, and we were drifting. After four years of sexual boredom and lack of intimacy, I sought it elsewhere.

But not once did I entertain any notions of romance with my lover. What had been missing was good sex. And as distant and confused my husband was, I still loved him. Jim and I still had issues after I ended the affair. But not once during that wild month had I felt any emotional tie to Mark, my lover. I still went home to my family. And once it was over, I tried to put it behind me.

As Mark pursued me after, there was concern, but I expected him to find another new woman or focus on previous women in his life. There were sure plenty of them.

The genuine fear began after Bella, my lover's wife, confronted me in February of 2008. When she showed me pictures and me with her husband having sex, my world almost collapsed. Realizing that someone had evidence of my affair and was willing to use it against me changed everything.

Why? Because by then, my husband and I were on the road to recovery and reconciliation. We were both in love again. Once I realized that, the fear of discovery was ever-present.

Even after I decided to turn down Mark's offer to run off with him, I knew that Bella had proof of my infidelity that could ruin me. After all, I hardly knew Bella as a person. All I knew was that she was the wronged wife of my lover, who had control over me. I wondered if she would expose me on a particular day like an anniversary, birthday, or holiday out of spite. Would she ruin me totally by sending the proof to my family and friends as well as Jim?

Initially, Jim worried about the stressed behavior I exhibited. But he accepted my explanation that it was caused by the pressure of my new career. Actually, the job was the only pleasant distraction from my fear of exposure.

As time passed, and I was promoted within B-fit, I became slightly complacent. There were days, and even weeks, I did not have the anxiety of the early days. Even Bella's flirting with my husband became just part of her interaction with us. From time to time, she would remind me of her hold over me in subtle ways, but never overtly so. But I should have known the bill was still due.

And one day, Bella collected on her threat to have my husband. But even after she brought us to her bed regularly, she held on to the information she had that could ruin my marriage. I came to realize that it was her way to keep me in line; that, and paying me a lot of money.

But I still wondered from time to time what she had shared with my husband during their times alone. Bella was very conniving, always playing the long game. And I was not the only woman she had working for her in my predicament.

I would learn that both Gwen Ruiz and Gloria Bash, two of the other B-fit image model/executives, had been Mark LaValliere's conquests. But unlike with them, Bella chose Jim and me to share her bed whenever she visited or had us visit Frisco. The familiarity and the way she went out of her way to keep my family together lulled me to a false sense of security.

That was my state the day Jim told me he knew. And that he had known for some time. How long? I wondered anxiously. All kinds of nightmare scenarios ran through my mind.

If he knew for "some time," why let me know now? And why this way? Was this the beginning of his well laid out plans to divorce me? Was I about to be served with divorce papers?

And it got worse as my paranoia assaulted my senses. Had Bella given him the pictures and video of Mark and me? Had he sent it to my parents and family? The press? Oh no!

A panic of epic proportions overtook me as I ran to the bathroom just in time to throw up. In a few minutes, I stood and looked in the mirror. I was a mess.

Think Linda... think, I chastised myself inwardly. Why now? Why not before? What had changed? Why ten years after the fact? And why had I not noticed before? Was Jim that good of an actor to fool me?

The answer to the last question was no. During the four years of our problems, Jim could not hide his reaction to them. Even later on, where our marriage got better, he still was terrible at concealing any concerns he had about Bella, our life, or his career. I could always sense if he had anxieties about something. Concerns I would investigate to make sure they were not about my past secrets.

So why now?

I had just returned from an overnight trip to a new B-fit location we were in the process of opening. It was a three-hour drive away in a different city. He had been fine two days before when I left. Jim had gone to bed early, and I did not want to wake him as I had been tired myself. So we had not made love the night before I drove out. I wasn't sure but could not remember if we had kissed goodnight.

We had texted during the day I was away and talked on the phone before dinner time. Tired from a busy day, I had gone to my hotel room after dinner around eight. Taking a shower, I had called home. Everything had seemed fine. We chatted for a few minutes. I yawned and apologized. Then we said, "I love you," and I crashed for the night.

The next morning my team and I drove the company van back to our central location, then took our personal vehicles home. Jim was not home when I arrived. So I decided to check on our monthly bills on the shared laptop. That was it. That told me what? That something had happened recently. Probably last night?

I was about to stand and ask my son what he knew but had a thought. It was Saturday morning, a time when Tommy slept late. So I sat back and stared at the screen. Think... think.

Browser history! Jim and I shared this laptop. Knowing we both did, we never bothered hiding anything on it. We had both learned from our friends Dee and Dave's contentious divorce that some digital behavior could make the other spouse suspicious. So we no longer had private passwords on our phones and laptops. And definitely, not this shared one.

I anxiously searched the history for the page with the Mark LaValliere scandal stories. Only finding others from months before when the scandal was fresh. But this one... the one with the potentially incriminating picture at the mall, was recent. The story had been published ten days before, but it had popped up in browser history the night of my trip. The night I was away.

Looking around, I noticed Jim's work laptop still in his leather carry bag. In minutes, I had opened it and rummaged through his browser history. And found it from a week before. A week!

It had actually been six days before; last Sunday to be exact. The best I could tell was that this "have known for a while" was not that long. But still, had he known before?

Hearing noise upstairs, I stood and went searching for my son Tommy. He was coming down the steps. A strapping fourteen, Tommy was a child right-off the old Johnson family block. There was no doubt to anyone that Jim was his biological father. Tall, lanky, and with his father's nose and mouth, my son also had the confident smile he copied from his dad.

"Hey, mom! When did you get home?" he asked as he opened the refrigerator reaching for the orange juice we bought for him by the gallon.

"About an hour and a half ago," I replied, taking in his familiar form.

My boy... my pride and joy. What would he think of me if his father exposed me and divorced me? I already knew his sister would hate me. She and I had a strained relationship, as most teen girls do with their mothers. But recently, even Tommy had held his distance from me. Jim had said that it was common for boys with good looking mothers. But I now wondered.

"Where's dad?" he asked.

Something about the way he asked and looked around told me this was not a typical query. His manner was uncharacteristically cautious. Like his father, he was not good at deception.

"He went out," I replied. "Not sure where."

"I see," he said with a slight hesitation.

"Tommy," I said, fixing his stare with one of my own. "Do you have something to tell me?"

He tried to look away, but I shook my head at him in disapproval.

"Talk to me, Tommy," I said, pointing to the table for him to sit.

"Emma found this article on the online edition from our local paper," he said as we sat facing each other.

"What about it?" I asked, trying to draw him out.

"Well," he said, clearly still uncomfortable doing so, "Emma reminded me that we had played years ago with some kids at the mall. I kind-of remember it. I mean, I was what? Four then?"

I said nothing waiting for him to go on.

"You know," he said. "The kids of that football player who has been cheating on his wife? Your boss."

"Go on."

"Well, Emma showed me the picture of the LaValliere family, and it jogged my memory. He is the dad of the kids we played with at the mall a couple of times with. Their mom is your boss. And Mark LaValliere is the guy you were talking to."

"And?"

"Well, mom," he said, trying to but not able to hide his embarrassment. "Emma and I read the article, and they say that this guy, LaValliere, was having affairs with all these married women..."

"What did your sister do?" I cut him off before he got the nerve to ask me if I was one of them.

"Eh... she... she showed it to dad, I think," Tommy said almost apologetically.

I stared at him for a few seconds, gathering my thoughts.

"Tommy, I love your dad and our family. You know that, right?"

"Yes, mom, I do," he said again, apologetically. "I told Emma to keep it to herself and not cause trouble. But she..."

"She what?"

Tommy rolled his eyes.

"Oh, come on, mom!" he scoffed. "Emma has her nose so far up dad's ass..."

"Hey, hey!" I cut him off. "Show some respect."

"Sorry. I meant she's daddy's girl through and through, mom. And it's no secret the two of you butt heads all the time these days."

"OK," I replied, reluctant to confirm the mother/daughter conflict between Emma and me. "So, what happened?"

"She told dad last Sunday when you were over at your grandma's house."

"Were you there? What did your dad say?"

"Dad just listened and told Emma to mind her own business," Tommy replied. "She tried to say that you were the woman in the picture facing the cheater guy, but dad raised his voice and told her enough."

"Was that all of it?"

"No. I was curious about how dad was taking it and sat here to do some homework. Later on, Emma came back downstairs and talked to dad in the den where he was on his laptop."

"What happened then?"

"She asked dad what he was going to do about it? And dad told her he was thinking things through but that she should stay quiet about it. In fact, mom, he made us both promise to say nothing to you.

"Later, I told Emma she was wrong to bring it up. That she could cause problems and that I didn't want our family to break up."

"What did she say?"

"I can't repeat what she said to me," he said. "You'll get mad."

"One time, you get a pass," I replied.

"She told me to fuck myself and that she doesn't like you and that you probably did it."

"I see," I replied, trying not to show the pain of what I had heard.

A tear ran down my face.

"Mom, I'm sorry. Are you OK?"

"Yes," I lied and nodded. "Not really, but..."

He said nothing but stared back apprehensively. I could tell he wanted to ask but couldn't bring himself to do so. Probably afraid of the answer.

"Tommy, I love you and your dad to no end. Even your goofy sister."

"Even after all she implied about you?" my son asked.

"Tommy. The world of adults and married people is complicated to no end," I replied. "There is no book on the perfect marriage. But there is one thing about it that is of little doubt. Mothers and fathers, no matter what, love their kids. I love you both. And I love your dad as well."

I could tell he was not satisfied with the answer.

"Someday Tommy, when you are older and about to get married, I will have a talk to you about this then. You are still young and don't have the tools of life to understand the mess that is marriage. Remind me then, OK?"

"Mom, you and dad are not getting a divorce, are you?"

"Not if I can help it, Tommy."

"Good," he replied, satisfied for the moment. "Because I told dad I don't want you to."

"You did?"

"Yeah. Dad just nodded and walked away. He hasn't said much to me since."

"Give him room, Tommy," I replied. "Give us both room. OK?"

He nodded.

"Where's your sister?" I asked.

"She went for a run," he replied. "About an hour ago."

"Thanks," I said, wiping another tear away.

"I love you, mom. I love you both. You know that, right? I'm not taking sides. But please don't get divorced."

"I love you too," I replied, touching his hand.